Posts: 199 I just started playing around with Trail Boss a few months ago and I love it. It's a great powder for beginners because it's very forgiving. I don't think you could blow up any modern gun with it even if you wanted to(but don't hold me to that )

I've loaded up 38 Spcl, 357 mag, 44 mag(44 Spcl but I haven't tried those yet), 45 Colt, 454 Casull, and 460 S&W. It's a great powder for making low power plinker loads. I have found it to be quite accurate for all rounds, and it burns very clean as well. The only down side to it is that you can't make anything hotter than "wimpy" status with it. But that's what it was designed for. I guess there is one other down side to it, and that would be that it costs a bit more than other powders.

If you consider 350 grain slug at 800-900 fps "wimpy". That load is substantially more powerful than the standard military 45 ACP.

Of course, that is what my shooting buddy gets from his 500 S&W, so I guess that WOULD be wimpy by comparison. It recoils like a 22 in that big gun.

I introduced him to TB as I was teaching him to load and picked a forgiving powder that had a high volume to energy ratio (was easy to see inside large cases). He still uses TB for practicing trigger control, introducing curious bystanders to the 500 (before gradually moving up to heavier loads if they want).

Trail Boss is great. NEVER COMPRESS TB. It does not (I am warned) take to having the granules broken up or packed too tightly.